Joel Embiid’s NBA Debut Marks Beginning of New Era for Philadelphia 76ers

PHILADELPHIA — Most will remember the dream shakes and fadeaway makes, the fluid pick-and-pops and NBA Jam-like blocks. 

But if you want an actual barometer for how special Joel Embiid is, and what his performance Wednesday night against the Thunder meant to the Philadelphia 76ers, their fans and the NBA as a whole, all you have to know is this:

He’s taken a hacky Ted Talk-like corporate maxim and made it cool.

“Trust the process,” Embiid said from his locker following the Sixers’ 103-97 home loss to the Thunder, large smile stretching across his face and yellow ice bucket at his feet. “That’s my motto.”

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Embiid spent the preseason repeating that phrase—the brainchild of former Sixers general manager Sam Hinkie, designer of the Sixers’ previous strategy to, well, not win games—whenever and wherever he could. There were pictures of him dunking posted to his Twitter account with the caption “Processing…” He stamped nearly all his Tweets with a “Trust the Process” hashtag. The word “process” appeared in myriad preseason quotes.

And so there he stood on the foul line Wednesday night, having just put Thunder big man Steve Adams through an array of post moves that would make Kevin McHale proud. Two dribbles with the left hand, a juke over the right shoulder, a spin over the left shoulder, a long stride and a drive to the rim. Adams, with no options left, slapped Embiid across the arm, leading to two free throws and Embiid barking out loud that Adams “can’t guard me.”

And then came the chants, not of “M-V-P,” which Embiid had heard earlier in the evening, but of something else and entirely new.

Trust the Process.

Trust the Process. 

Of course, doing so hasn’t been easy for Embiid, or the Sixers, even if everything looked easy on this night when he finished with a team-high 20 points in 22 minutes and nearly out-dueled Russell Westbrook.

It had been 852 days since the Sixers drafted Embiid No. 3 overall in 2014, meaning he had been a member of the organization for 852 days without suiting up for a single …

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